Our Second Kiss
by infinite.regress17
Summary: The Doctor and Clara's desperate plan to save the children of a doomed planet goes terribly wrong. The Doctor has to give Clara the kiss of life. That was their first kiss.


The Doctor skidded to a halt on the shore of a murky, angry lake. Behind him were barren fields, devoid of the cattle they'd seen when they arrived two days ago. In the last hour alone three of the distant mountains had burst their snow-caps, shooting plumes of lava high into the sky.

With dread pooling in his stomach, he searched for Clara. They'd had a plan, a desperate plan to be sure, but didn't all the best plans have a touch of desperation? It was supposed to go like this: He'd lead the children to the Ark Ship and repair the engines, so the pilot could get off the ground and out of the path of the volcanoes. Clara, meanwhile, came here, to open the shield gate so the ship, with the lost children, their surviving parents and all the animals they had desperately mustered could escape this doomed world.

But the planetary defense shield still glimmered, fully active, in the reddened, smoke-choked sky. Clara was nowhere to be seen.

The Doctor approached the gate's control unit, a grey box-like structure, with an instrument panel and a towering antenna dish, in the field beside the lake. An open inspection hatch on the side exposed a tangle of circuits. Crouching beside the unit, he poked at the wires and valves with a tentative finger. The power inverter crystal was missing from the control unit. The shield gate wouldn't open without the crystal. He looked up , scanning across the fields. She should be here, right now, so they could dash back to the TARDIS together congratulating themselves on their cleverness. That was the plan, and unless they got that gate open, the Ark Ship would never break orbit. How long did they have? Twenty minutes? Probably less, before the continental stablisers on this terraformed world went critical. He cursed and stood up, a chill curling in his gut. Where the hell was Clara?

"Clara?" he called her name, his hearts racing now. Tracks ran to the lake's muddy shore. Two sets of footprints went right to the water's edge, one set large and deep, the other smaller. The mud by the water was churned up, as if from a struggle. The large footprints led away along the shore.

"Clara!" he called, tight-throated, his mind piecing together a scene that turned him cold.

Malkus Vren. The lumbering preacher who saw not death, but salvation in the devastation to come. Nothing the Doctor had said changed his mind.

He'd made a terrible mistake underestimating Vren.

"Clara!" he yelled, his hearts thundering now, as the blood-red skies darkened with swathes of volcanic smoke. A gathering storm crackling with static. There was nowhere else. Clara must be in the lake. He kicked off his shoes and waded in waist-deep.

Then he saw her; floating face up in the water, her hair spread like a desolate crown, her brown eyes wide and unseeing.

With a roar, he scooped her up. She lay limp in his arms, deadly still, unbreathing, paler than he'd ever seen her.

He ploughed through the water, back to the shore and placed her on the ground. He leaned in and brushed his cheek to her nose and mouth, but he already knew he'd feel no breath. Her chest was quite still. Her eyes, her beautiful brown eyes were wide open, but his Clara was not there. So much for his duty of care. So much for keeping her safe. What was the point of being the Doctor, if he couldn't save the woman he loved?

"No, no, no, no, no." He wouldn't lose her. He couldn't fail her like this.

Tears stinging his eyes, he pressed the heel of his hand on her breast bone, and his other hand on top of that. Shoulders straight, he compressed her chest, again and again, thirty times. Then he tilted her head gently and lifted her chin.

He paused a split second. How often had he longed to kiss Clara? A thousand times, in a hundred ways, but not like this. Never like this, with her lips stone cold, her eyes unseeing.

He pinched her nose, covered his mouth with hers, and blew. Once, twice, until her chest rose. Not her breath, but his, making her chest rise and fall. He pumped her heart again. Breathed life into her again.

"Come on Clara. Don't do this. Don't leave me." He pumped her heart as if his own life depended on it, as if nothing else mattered in the whole universe. He blew against her cold blue lips again, and again she failed to respond.

Anger rippled in his chest now. This was not fair. It wasn't right! A desolate wind blew across the lake, but it didn't cool the fire in his hearts. All of time, all of space, would bend to him. Nothing would take her away.

"Bring her back to me!" he demanded of the universe.

Something splashed on her cheek. A rain drop? No. A tear. The tears of a Time Lord. They fell thick and fast, and while there's tears, there's hope. Or so they say.

Another kiss of life, more compressions. He wouldn't give up.

Then her cheek twitched.

Clara coughed and spluttered, rolled and spat water, her chest reflexively heaving.

His knees trembled, his arms crumbled from their stiff position over her chest, and he fell heavily onto his backside. She was breathing, alive, and looking up at him. She gasped and struggled to sit up. She held up her hand as if she wanted him to hold it. But then she opened her fist. The inverter crystal sat in her palm, it's facets reflecting the crimson sky.

The earth rumbled the final death throes of this world.

"Open the shield gate," Clara croaked. Above, the Ark ship was just visible, a grey monster under the circular gate between this once-beautiful planet and the rest of the galaxy.

He smiled and pressed an impulsive kiss to Clara's forehead, and then sprinted back to the gate's control box. The wind became a terrible roar, the lake crashing against the shore, the distant mountains quaking.

With trembling, icy fingers he thrust the inverter crystal into its housing.

High above, blue lightning arced across the shield gate in the scarlet sky, before the glimmering shield faded. The blackness of space beyond the gate seemed to beckon the ship.

Clara had hobbled to his side. She looked up the sky, gripping the side of the control box, as if she wasn't entirely sure her legs would hold her. He leaped up and put his arm around her waist. She pressed against him, her eyes closed, a wordless moment of needing him close.

"It was Vren," she said. "He was here when I arrived, raving that the children should stay to face the fates, accept that this was a just end for the sins of their fathers. He tried to take the crystal. I didn't let him."

He drew her closer, into a hug, because he needed to feel her alive next to him, her heart beating and know he'd dragged her back from the brink.

"I thought I'd lost you," he said. It wasn't enough. It could never be enough to explain how he felt. "I don't think I could stand losing you."

"Don't be daft," she said, her tone light and reassuring, despite everything, and quite at odds with the storm raging around them. "I'm not going anywhere."

A mighty crack shocked them both into staring up. The Ark flashed through the gate, out of the atmosphere and away into hyperspace.

"They made it," Clara said. But he could barely hear her as the wind tore his jacket. The ground rumbled. This dying world was cacophony of chaos at its last gasp. There was no hope here. He wouldn't spend one second searching for Vren. Vren lost the right to a second chance when he hurt Clara.

She shivered in his arms.

"We need to get out of here," he said, taking her hand. "Can you run?"

She nodded. "I'll always run with you, Doctor. To the end of my days." Her tawny brown eyes met his.

Did she mean it? Would she really choose the chaos of his life, this dangerous dance around the cosmos? For a moment, for a glorious, wild moment he thought of kissing her.

"Clara," he began, but the wind stole his words.

A guttural creak deep in the planet's core groaned through the landscape.

No time for questions. They ran across the heaving fields, dodging cracks opening in the earth, until they tumbled together into the TARDIS. He fell on the controls and sent them spinning into the vortex.

Clara slumped onto one of the pilot's seats, catching her breath.

He put the back of his hand to her forehead. "You're so cold. We should take you to sickbay. Check you out."

"Nah. I'm fine, just need a shower to warm up." She looked at him. He was hovering like a concerned school-boy next to his crush, he knew it. Something churned in his stomach, a strange feeling he didn't know where to put, some combination of admiration, love, and desire. He ran his hands through his hair. How was he supposed to know what to say? She'd never written a note card for this. _I'm sorry for standing here like an ass. Is it okay if I kiss you? Perhaps just another hug, if kissing's pushing the boundaries._ Really, he'd accept just watching her for eternity, if that was the best he could get.

She tugged at the corner of his coat. "You're soaked too. Let's both get cleaned up, and then maybe we could go somewhere nice?"

"Sure. Absolutely. Anywhere in particular?" he gabbled.

She shrugged. "Somewhere peaceful?" She dripped her way across the console room, but paused before heading up the steps towards her room. "Thank you. Thank you for bringing me back," she said, almost shyly, before hurrying away, as if she really didn't know how to talk about it either.

The Doctor groaned and rested his arms and head against the console. What the hell was he supposed to do with these feelings rattling around his chest?

#

"Raglan Five wasn't always a car crash," he told Clara later. "Once, it was a beautiful place." The Doctor led Clara through a field of soft, vivid grass and back to the lake. "This was the planet a two thousand years ago, before the settlers arrived and got carried away with the terraforming."

The waters on the lake were smooth and clear, sparkling fresh blue. The distant mountains were snowcapped. It couldn't have been more different from the disaster they had just left.

Clara sat and gazed out of the lake. "It was strange. I felt you. Bringing me back. Your breath in my lungs." She brought her fingers up to her cheek, and they were trembling. "I felt your tears on my face," she said, softly. "They were like an anchor, somehow. Bringing me home." She smiled, always brave, always forgiving, his Clara. The she laughed a little. "That was quite a place for our first kiss. I never thought it would be like that."

"Nor did I," he laughed tightly, scooping to pick up a stone. He skimmed it across the lake, and then sat down beside her.

She glanced side ways at him. "So, you've thought about it, then? Our first kiss, I mean."

"No! Of course not." His face flushed, denial tripping from his lips. But she deserved better than that, and for a tiny moment he let himself believe that he did too. "Although," he said, measuring each word, "if I had … well I'd probably imagine it happening somewhere peaceful. Where the sun paints the sky violet, and the grass was shimmering blue. There'd be be a rainbow. Maybe even just like this one." He traced his finger through the coloured arch in sky over head.

Clara watched him. "Oh. That sounds like a good place for a second kiss, by a peaceful lake with a rainbow. Hypothetically." It was her turn to seem breathless now, her cheeks tinged red, her pupils blown large. Her hair blew gently in the warm evening breeze.

"Does it?" he whispered, swept along by the look in her eyes and the tingling in his chest daring him to push, to delve more.

She nodded, a small nod, chewing her bottom lip, just enough to show her nerves. Maybe she felt it too, this live thing between them, a golden thread spun between their souls. Then her eyes locked with his just long enough to jolt him. Her lips parted, and then closed again into a small smile. She didn't know what to do next anymore than he did.

"Um. I wouldn't mind. A second kiss," she said after a while. Then she swallowed, and more words poured out in a nervous rush. "Because that first one, well, I wasn't really awake, what with the drowning and all, and if you're going to kiss me, I think I'd like to remember it."

"Would you?" He leaned in, his hearts thundering now, and moved a lock of her hair aside. Then he pressed his lips to hers in a soft, questioning kiss. He drew back, leaving his hearts in her hands. She could take him or leave him now, own him or break him. He'd never felt more vulnerable in his lives.

She answered his kiss with her own, offering her lips as a gift. Small sounds of pleasure passed from her, intoxicating him, flooding him with a hot rush of desire. He pulled her closer and kissed her deeply. It was almost too much, finally holding her in his arms. After wanting her so long. Perhaps he could stay right here, kissing Clara, for eternity.

After a while, she whispered, "There's just one problem with a second kiss."

His heart plummeted. Here it was. She was going to knock him back. Break his hearts. He should have known better. "Oh?" he managed.

Her eyes were bright. "A second kiss makes you want a third."

He let his breath go in a jolt of relief. She wanted more. She wanted _him_. He could see it in her eyes now, in the way she tugged on his jacket, and her cheeks flushed crimson.

"We have this whole world, and time," he said. He was already lost. Lost in her lips, in her eyes, in the way her hair was silk between his fingers. Nothing had felt this right in a very long time.

She stood up, offering him her hand. "I know where we should have our next kiss, Doctor."

"Where's that?"

"At home," she said simply.

"You want to go home?" He stood up now, not quite sure what she meant, and pounded by another wave of uncertainty. "You mean back to Earth?"

"No," she whispered. "Back to the TARDIS. It's felt like home for a while now."

He threaded his fingers through hers. "Then home it is."

And they walked, under the warm spring sky, hand in hand, together towards home.


End file.
